They told me...
They told me that we couldn't go to war unless the Congress voted for it.
Congress did.
They told me that we had to have a UN resolution.
It's number 1441.
They told me that oil prices would skyrocket.
They fell.
They told me that we dare not embark on a "real" ground war, our military wasn't up to it.
They were up for it, big time.
They told me there would be terrorist attacks around the world.
Three weeks, no attacks.
They told me that the Iraqis would fight like demons; with bio and chemical weapons.
They didn't.
They told me that we didn't have enough troops or equipment in Iraq to win.
We did.
They told me that our supply lines were too long and tenuous.
They weren't.
They told me that the Iraqi troops would hide behind civilians,
making it impossible to get at them without killing the civilians.
High precision, communication and compassion
turned out to be a better strategy. Never in history has a army worked so hard to avoid killing civilians.
They told me that the cities would never fall without bloody,
street-to-street fighting that would kill hundreds of thousands of
civilians.
Never happened.
They told me the war would dissolve into a quagmire, lasting many months.
The regime fell in three weeks.
They told me there would be huge US casualties.
Less than a hundred, so far.
They told me that the Iraqi people would see us as invaders, not liberators.
Tell it to the marines.
Now, they're telling me that there might still be terrible fighting
ahead, that aid won't arrive fast enough, that Iraqis will get over
their jubilation and start hating us, that Saddam isn't dead yet, and
that no Iraqi government can be considered legitimate unless it's
established by the UN.
We'll see.
Some snips from Associated Press today:
"He killed millions of us," said one young Iraqi, who spat on one of countless portraits of Saddam scattered throughout the capital.
"We are relieved because for years we lived in anxiety and fear," said Shamoun George, a resident of Baghdad's Karrada district, as American troops entered the area.
"Bush, Bush, Thank you," chanted small bands of youth in Saddam City, a predominantly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad.